Acronym for COmmon Business Oriented Language. Developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, COBOL is the second-oldest high-level programming language (FORTRAN is the oldest). It is particularly popular for business applications that run on large computers.

COBOL is a very wordy language. Although mathematical expressions can also be written like other programming languages (see example below), its verbose mode is very readable for a novice. For example, multiply hourly-rate by hours-worked giving gross-pay is self-explanatory. COBOL is structured into the following divisions: